The Black Sun

Free yourself from impulses like overeating, using alcohol or drugs, or compulsively checking your phone with the BLACK SUN.

Cues to Use The Tool

1. Use this tool at the moment Part X floods you with any kind of self-defeating urge—to reach for ice cream or potato chips, check your email, lose your temper, etc. Used repeatedly, this tool will train you to stop giving in to these impulses and turn inward instead.

2. Most of the time we're not indulging our impulses; we're looking forward to the moment we will give in, like having that drink or or smoking a joint at the end of the day. Use the Black Sun the moment you feel yourself slipping into one of these fantasies.

The Tool in Brief

1. Deprivation: Feel the deprivation of not getting what you want, as intensely as possible. Then let go of the thing you want. Forget about the outside world as a source of anything that will fill you up inside; let it disappear.

2. Emptiness: Look inside yourself. What was a feeling of deprivation is now an endless void. Face it. Remain calm and still.

3. Fullness: From the depths of the void, imagine a Black Sun ascends, expanding inside until you become one with its warm, limitless energy.

4. Giving: Redirect your attention to the outside world. The Black Sun energy will overflow, surging out of you. As it enters the world, it becomes a pure, white light of infinite giving.

Replenishing Your Life Force

When Part X is tempting you to give in to your impulses, what it's trying to do is steal your Life Force. Self-restraint not only preserves your Life Force, it increases it. When you hold an impulse back, the lower, greedy energy is transformed into a higher, giving energy, increasing your Life Force.

More on the Black Sun

Learn more about the Black Sun tool in the articles below and in Coming Alive.